AWS Unveils Amazon Kinesis Analytics

Using Kinesis Analytics, developers can write standard SQL queries on streaming data and gain actionable insights in real-time, without having to learn any new programming skills.

Today’s digital businesses generate massive quantities of streaming data from diverse sources such as website and mobile app click-streams, sensors embedded in connected devices and IT system log files.

Being able to continuously query and gain insights from this information in real-time – as it arrives – can allow companies to respond more quickly to business and customer needs. However, existing data processing and analytics solutions aren’t able to continuously process this “fast-moving” data, so customers develop streaming data processing applications – which can take months to build and fine-tune – and invest in infrastructure to handle high-speed, high-volume data streams that might include tens of millions of events per hour.

With Kinesis Analytics, AWS aims to make continuously querying streaming data in real-time as simple as writing SQL queries. Kinesis Analytics integrates with Kinesis Streams and Kinesis Firehose and can automatically recognize standard data formats within data streams and suggest a schema, which AWS says is easy to edit using Kinesis Analytics’ interactive schema editor.

“With [this] addition, we’ve expanded what’s already the broadest portfolio of analytics services available and made it easy to use SQL to do analytics on real-time streaming data... ," said Barga.

Getting started

Customers can get started with Amazon Kinesis Analytics by going to the AWS Management Console and selecting a Kinesis Streams or Kinesis Firehose data stream. Kinesis Analytics ingests the data, automatically recognizes standard data formats, and suggests a schema that can be refined using the interactive schema editor.

Next, customers use the SQL editor and built-in templates to write SQL queries and point to where they want to load the processed results. Kinesis Analytics takes care of everything required to continuously query streaming data, automatically scaling to match the volume and throughput rate of incoming data while delivering sub-second processing latencies.

Client feedback

MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) is a full-service solutions provider that delivers digital experiences through all forms of interactive media.

Customers can launch Kinesis Analytics using the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) or AWS SDKs. They pay only for the resources that their stream processing applications use. There is no minimum fee or setup cost.

Amazon Kinesis Analytics includes technology components licensed from SQLstream. It's available in the US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon) and EU (Ireland) Regions and will expand to additional Regions in the coming months.